Anyone else a bit underwhelmed by the new site?

[mattitude]

First off, I feel like a total d-bag for posting this, but hey, can't deny my feelings. So apologies in advance...

When I heard all the details of the new community site before the game was released, I got crazy excited. When it took a month past the game's release for the new site to go live, my anticipation kept building and building. Maybe that was my problem. When I finally got to experience it, all I could think was... "This is it? Seriously?"

Okay, I know there's a lot more coming. Once we get to export our in-game avatars and band logos and such to the site (and that IS coming, right HMX?), I know it'll seem a lot more integrated than it does now. But I REALLY REALLY hope there's tons more coming. Literally, tons.

I'd been visiting GH3's community site in the meantime, and I don't even own the game (nor do I intend to). I kept thinking to myself, "Self, this is so intricate and detailed and involving. I betcha our community site is going to blow this one out of the water." But here we are, with a bare-bones survey page for our username, and a bare-bones survey page for our band, neither of which anybody has any reason to check out. I mean seriously, once you fill out all the "Favorite Band" lists and whatnot, what is there left to do?

Again, I feel like a total jerk for bringing up these complaints about something HMX didn't even have to do in the first place, and only did it to please all of us and enhance the whole experience. But frankly, I'd have rather kept waiting for months for a community site that would've blown my ass out the door.

Ah well. Harmonix has rarely been one to disappoint, so I'm willing to wait around for all the awesome to arrive. I just hope it's actually in the pipeline.

Agree/disagree?

[Zidd]

You were expecting this fully integrated site to pop onto the internet overnight? Be patient these things take time, especially with all the people signing up. The servers are probabaly getting tons of traffic and they want to get past this first big load before they turn on all of the features.

[0tj]

Ya, I tried to go onto the forums and it said this website did not exist. I was like why? After a day and a half i think they got quite a bit done. But now my load times are like dial-up fast, and i have cable! lol

[hedburnr]

it will get to that point, give it time.
we're up and running with our accounts linked within two days of launch. that took the guitar hero site nearly a month or more to get working right.
if HMX is movin that fast than it should hopefully not take long for the rest of the goodies to come. til that time comes, just keep playin the game til your eyes bleed, thats what ive been doing.

[evilkitty]

While the new site is a bit sparse, it is rather normal for large sites to have a tiered release. I don't know how the developers intend for it to be released, but when I did work with websites, we did the same thing. The initial launch would contain the bare bones of the site, and subsequently more features would be added as the system was stabilized and debugged. It also keeps people interested and coming back when you update or implement a feature.

Anyway, just give it a while, I'm sure more features will pop up eventually. The site's only been alive for a few days; it's pretty good that it's even loading properly (most of the time) now, instead of timing out due to traffic overload.

[o0MeTaL0o]

For a 2 day launch, I'm amazed it actually works as well as it does.
I'd expect more in the near future. These HMX guys/gals are working faster and harder than most sites with this much traffic could even conceive. Especially considering it's the holidays.

[Eman311]

So far i am not very impressed (in light of what they had promised)

give it a month or so, and I bet they'll give us the goods.

[Conner_Malvecino]

I'm just a little upset because I can't log on to my old account because my login happened to have a space character :( No matter, I'll be on here for a LONG time!

[Frederf]

I don't know what the planned feature list for the community site, so I can't compare expectations to results here. It's hard to get particularly excited about a website like this. Blogs and leaderboards? Sounds like a time sink that no one will care about.

Let's look at first impression of the home page:
A 6x5 grid of the newest 30 rockers (yes I can multiply). All but 3 of the pictures are the default blue picture. The names are gamerTags (in really small font) of other people that I care about approximately half of zero. On the right is a huge ad for some flash game Harmonix also makes. The only important part is the part in the upper right that has "My Profile", "My Bands", "Logout", "Help", and "Inbox."

My Profile is a major point, my bands is too, logout is obvious, help doesn't tell you about the site but is a general bundle of helpful links for Rock Band in general, and Inbox is empty because no one cares that I registered on this site.

My profile shows my rockers, name, cash, hometown, and instrument which is kind of dumb since my instrument is clearly already labeled by the huge instrument icon to the left of the entry. Perhaps the huge icon is just a placeholder for a screenshot of my guy/gal. The bands and characters are listed in a really weird way that squishes them into a tiny space and unreadable/hidden while the rest of the page is pretty much empty of anything important.

It shows I have two bands but one of them I deleted about 2 weeks ago and it still lists it, first insultingly, while my real band is hidden behind some unhelpfully labeled buttons.

The band page shows the leader... gamerTag, not the leader character. The member list is incomplete, the band logo has not been retrieved from the xbox or the motto.

Maybe the website is going to start pulling screenshots of characters (or generated based on code description), band logo, way way more stats/ history, motto, etc someday but it doesn't appear to now. Right now my version of the site is pretty much the exact copy of anyone else's and quite sparse.

The website seems quite polished but rather fat/slow in the construction. Hopefully the servers and such will be able to run this thing acceptably soon.

The top 5 suggestions I would make for improving the site are:

#1: Make the home page for the site be a globe map with where all our rockers and bands are either in real life or what we told the game to make our home town. Having a stick and flag out of Seattle with how many rockers and bands call that home is tons better than a 6x5 grid of default rocker pics.

#2: Prompt the user for info, show only pages and fields in public display that have content. People are usually more than happy to fill out a form about some basic info instead of having to go back later and hunt for how to get their data on their pages. Also if I've never ever made a blog entry... dont' bother showing that on my main page.

#3: Make a whole site skin per hometown. This gives a lot of variety in the web site's look and makes it feel more personal. "Hey there's the Space Needle and our band/rocker is based in Seattle! Cool!" Perhaps some additional ones as well.

#4: Cull a lot of info from the Xboxes and PS3s. Character visuals, band logos, performance histories, BWT extras acquired.

#5: Make the important stuff take up most of the screen.
Band Members: Johnny Nap..., Clive Win..., Casey Ly....
Is a really poor use of screen space.

I'm confident that these things will be improved/take time, just my impressions thus far.

[toefer2]

The site, so far, isn't what I thought it was going to turn into, but I can imagine it sort of expanding over the next few weeks.

In any case, I don't really care. It seemed like a cool idea when I first heard of it back in the summer, but I don't really care enough about other people's bands (sorry guys), and don't have enough of an ego to want a profile page for my band, full of pictures, and a fake blog, and on and on.

I guess it's cool if you're into that sort of thing, but give them a bit more time to incorporate it all.

[WiredRacing]

You're not alone. I suggested the same and was lambasted for it.


You were expecting this fully integrated site to pop onto the internet overnight?
This isn't overnight. This site was supposed to go live on Launch day, but they wanted to "make it right" so a month later and all we have is new graphics.

Yes they didn't "HAVE" to do it, but they also said they were doing it and Rigopulos mentioned a number of very exciting plans for the game/franchise which I was hoping a subset of would show up due to the site launch delay. Sadly... it's pretty plain jane, especially for such an innovative company.

All this said, at the end of the day, I'd be happier if they just focused on DLC. Since this is all cake...

[AdamBomb629]

It will be rocking in a few weeks/months. Look at how much better the GH3 site is since launch. It's night and day!

[Almadiel]

Anyone who thinks this is a time waster that nobody will use has obviously never visited Score Hero.

[Frederf]

Yeah but I don't think RB's community site is anywhere near as useful as scorehero yet.

Does anyone have a link to the initial "grand concept" or "proposed features" of the community website system? I'm curious what was planned / expected.

[TheAntiDesiredFX]

I'm not even in a position to evaluate what's here, yet, since I can't reactivate my original account and I'm not about to set up my page under this account until someone tells me it can be transferred.

As for the other features, as far as I'm concerned, they can wait until after all of the people in my position are given the opportunity to avail themselves of the updated site using their original screen names.

[CKarinja]

I'm not even in a position to evaluate what's here, yet, since I can't reactivate my original account and I'm not about to set up my page under this account until someone tells me it can be transferred.

As for the other features, as far as I'm concerned, they can wait until after all of the people in my position are given the opportunity to avail themselves of the updated site using their original screen names.

Have you tried the Lost Password link recently? I was on my alt POOPOONAYDEZ yesturday, but someone tipped me off that the password request worked, so I tried it out and it worked like a charm for me.

[DesiredFX]

I'm back, baby!


Have you tried the Lost Password link recently? I was on my alt POOPOONAYDEZ yesturday, but someone tipped me off that the password request worked, so I tried it out and it worked like a charm for me.

Yup...just checked in the announcements and saw that hmxsean said they "should be working" as of yesterday afternoon, so I gave it a shot.

Woo!

Now I regret leaving my PS3 behind because I can't look up my link code...

[DrEvyl666]

I think I like some of the new additions, my only real complaint is that the site seems to run like it's on a 286 connected to the internet with two Dixie cups and a string.

[Frederf]

Yeah but I don't think RB's community site is anywhere near as useful as scorehero yet.

Does anyone have a link to the initial "grand concept" or "proposed features" of the community website system? I'm curious what was planned / expected.

Answering my own question:


Dear Frederf,

We are excited to announce the brand new RockBand.com community site! We've migrated your existing community account and we are ready and waiting for you to log in (with your new password - see below for more information). What's new, you ask? A stack of new features. Beginning now, you can:

* Link your RockBand.com account to your Xbox Live gamertag or Playstation Network id to share your characters, bands, and high scores with your friends.

* Compare your high scores with the Rock Band community on the brand new Leaderboards!

* Make friends, write a blog, and post your pictures on your own personal RockBand.com page!

* Last but not least, the community forums that you've come to know and love return in all of their glory, with all of your posts intact!

Please be aware that during the re-launch we are importing your account info into the brand new system. You will be able to log in with your old username, but you have a new password. Your login information is now:

username: Frederf
password:

You can login to the new site by clicking the link below. (If you get a site down page, you're ahead of the curve - try back again in an hour or two.)

http://www.rockband.com/rockers_home

PLEASE NOTE: if you received an earlier email from us titled "Replacement login information ..." please disregard it. Sorry about that.

Thanks again for being a part of our community, and welcome to the new RockBand.com!

Sincerely,
The Harmonix Team

Lol thanks Apples but that was no longer my password.

[DrEvyl666]

Dude, I'm not sure it's such a great idea to be posting your password there (unless you've changed it already)... might wanna edit that outta there.

[espher]

This isn't overnight. This site was supposed to go live on Launch day, but they wanted to "make it right" so a month later and all we have is new graphics.

Staggered/tiered release?

[djbarg]

I underwhelmed by the speed of the site. Pages in the forum take up to 15 seconds to load - last time I checked I was surfing on a 5meg cable connection, not a 28.8k dial up. WTF?

[Brentstah]

Uh.. You're UNDERwhelmed by this site? You should've seen it back in September, jeez!
I thought the site was PERFECT back then, but i log in a couple months later to see if I remember the password, and I'm lagging like hell at the home screen. I had to UPGRADE my computer just to run the website! Good thing I got 20mb download and 2mb upload speed now, though.

[CKarinja]

I underwhelmed by the speed of the site. Pages in the forum take up to 15 seconds to load - last time I checked I was surfing on a 5meg cable connection, not a 28.8k dial up. WTF?

My guess would be that too many people are accessing the site, which is going to bog it down a notch. But, that is expected since this site just got upgraded, so more people want to use it's features.

[Xzyliac]

All I expected was the old site with a new coat of paint and few enhancements so I'm not disappointed. As long as my blog is back I'm happy.

I am however extremely pissed off about the fact that I need my PSP to keep me occupied in between switching pages. The loading is miserable. I have been avoiding the itch to post because of it.

[mattitude]

So I read that GH3's community page was really buggy when it first launched, but were the features as stripped-down as ours currently are?

[DesiredFX]

The GH3 page has features? I checked it about three times during the first week I had the game, and there wasn't anything there that was interesting enough to compel me to come back.

So I guess my answer to your question is "no, the features there weren't really any better than what we have here right now."

[Majic19]

For the first two days the site was VERY slow and I kept getting the "504 error code" but now it is running flawlessly for me. Pages load quickly, no error codes and no problems posting or editing.

From what I can tell,(or hope) the available content will increase gradually as time goes on. Fo an initial release the site is what I expected and is more than I've come to expect by way of comparison to other sites.

Jut my 2 cents worth